Festival Neue Literatur 2026: “Intimate Thresholds – Identity and Longing”
Image: Festival Neue Literatur
October 26, 2026 | 6:00 PM | Deutsches Haus at NYU
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Join us on October 26 for Intimate Thresholds: Identity and Longing, an evening of readings and conversation as part of the 16th anniversary of Festival Neue Literatur. Authors Julia Franck and Nicole Krauss will discuss their books Worlds Apart and To Be a Man, moderated by author and literary translator Tess Lewis.
About the Program
How do our desires shape our worlds? What influence does history have on our longings? Why are loss and grief such creatively generative forces? In this thought-provoking exchange, Julia Franck and Nicole Krauss will read from their work and discuss the ways we struggle to achieve a sense of ourselves both because of and despite the social, historical, and emotional forces to which we are subject.
Franck’s Worlds Apart, based on her youthful diaries and early life, follows a childhood shaped by family, displacement, poverty, neglect, and shame, and the young writer’s journey toward finding her voice. Krauss’s To Be a Man explores what it means to be a man and a woman through stories that move across Switzerland, Japan, New York City, Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, and South America. Together, the works examine identity, desire, history, loss, grief, and the forces that shape human relationships.
About the Festival
Festival Neue Literatur (FNL) was established in 2009 as a collaborative project of New York’s leading German-language cultural institutions, including the Austrian Cultural Forum New York, the German Consulate General New York, the Consulate General of Switzerland in New York, Columbia University School of the Arts, Deutsches Haus at NYU, and the Goethe-Institut New York. It is the first and only festival to spotlight German-language and U.S. fiction together, bringing new literature from Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and the U.S. to New York audiences. The 16th anniversary of Festival Neue Literatur takes place October 26–29, 2026. The festival is presented with additional support from the German Federal Foreign Office, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, and the Frankfurt Book Fair Office.